Lewis was not only a first class journalist, he had also studied at Harvard Law School as well. From the Times obit:

Mr. Lewis cut a striking figure in Washington. He was 'cool, lean, well-scrubbed looking, intense and brilliant," Gay Talese wrote in "The Kingdom and the Power,”"his 1969 history of The Times. "Lewis seemed tightly contained at all times, incredibly controlled, his orderly mind concentrating on only those things that were relevant now, at this second."

and

"There’s a kind of lucidity and directness to his prose," said Joseph Lelyveld, a former executive editor of The Times. "You learned an awful lot of law just from reading Tony Lewis’s accounts of opinions."

Although he had long retired from covering the Supreme Court, I sure wish Lewis was around to interpret the oral arguments that will be heard today and tomorrow at the court on the issue of same sex marriage.

Craig Smith is a law professor and has been blogging about the local Santa Barbara scene since 2006. When he’s not teaching law school classes or blogging, he enjoys bike riding, skiing and playing piano.